Banks Shun Bitcoin In Hong Kong, Businesses Seek Foreign Help

Gatecoin is one of several Hong Kong Bitcoin operators that got foreign banking support after account freezes.

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Hong Kong’s Bitcoin business sector is feeling uncertain as local exchange Gatecoin loses its banking services.

Just a month after reports of a mass ‘Bitcoin exodus’ from China after it banned crypto-to-fiat trading and ICOs, Hong Kong also appears to be creating a more hostile environment.

Gatecoin, one of the industry’s older exchanges, has dealt with banking freezes before, the company’s Marketing Head Thomas Glucksmann told South China Morning Post, but the latest blow in September came without warning.

“We had just tripled our customer base in a two to three month period, Bitcoin price was rallying, the amount of money clients were depositing was increasing – the timing couldn’t have been worse,” he explained to the publication.

Bitcoin-friendly Japan had said it could not yet service the demand from Chinese businesses looking to relocate and forge ties with the newly-permissive neighbor.

Now, Hong Kong could add fuel to the fire, Gatecoin having had to use foreign banks to continue operating as the domestic situation remained deadlocked.

“Banking is a prized commodity in the Bitcoin space,” Bitspark CEO George Harrap continued on the ironic problem of Bitcoin businesses relying on banks to achieve crucial adoption. Bitspark also had to find foreign banking support to continue operations.

Banks throughout the world have often posed problems for cryptocurrency outfits, with institutions arbitrarily shutting down bank accounts without warning temporarily or permanently.

The new resistance in Hong Kong jars noticeably with the local banking sector’s appetite for Blockchain, Cointelegraph reporting last week that twenty had signed up for a trade network with Singapore using the technology.